


Where the Ocean Meets the Sky

by orphan_account



Category: Free!
Genre: 2011 Tsunami, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Established Relationship, M/M, Olympic Swimmer Matsuoka Rin, Olympic Swimmer Nanase Haruka, Relief Aid Volunteer Matsuoka Rin, Trauma, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 08:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19195216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Rin opens up about his volunteering experience. Haru listens.





	Where the Ocean Meets the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Hello,  
> I’m reposting this from my old account because this is one of my favourite things I’ve ever written and I intend to write more in this fandom.  
> Thank you for reading.

"You cannot flippantly call me a tsunami." 

Staring at his mobile phone, an openmouthed Great White Shark dangling from its chain, Rin aims to pulverize the device with his eyes alone. To date, Haru has never seen him so angry. Maybe once before now, but certainly concerning a matter far more impactful than someone's comment on a Twitter thread.

"You're overreacting," he says, sliding his toes farther into the heated depths of the pool. Around them, the driven swimmers that make up the regulars at the recreation center have quietly dispersed, all of them reacting in various stages of wonderment to the young athletes, clad in professional attire. Demurring, Haru encloses himself in a mindful tranquility, observing with a furtive detachment. Rin, he senses, balks at their naked admiration, wishing he wielded a status that granted the two of them permanent privacy. As it stands, two weeks into their training regimen, the days leading up to the Olympics ripple out of their grasp.

"Ever the expressionless piece of ass, you have the gall to question my trauma." Boiling his phone, his eyes aflame, Rin chucks it at Haru's head. "Fuck you in the waters of Hell." Sniffing, Haru eases his legs out of the pool, turning toward the boy's locker room.

"Whatever this person meant to impart," he says, the shark jangling in his hand, "there's no way they could have known about that word triggering you." A guttural snarl rips through Rin's lips. Clawing at his head, he looms over the pool.

"That's an explanation, Haruka! No excuse." Breathing in sharp lungfuls of air, Haru shakily stands on the slippery stone floor. Mapping the knots of tension on Rin's back, he pinpoints the notches his hands caress before bed.

His voice low in his throat, he says, "I think it's time to talk about Kamaya, Rin."

Sagging, a heavy weariness leaving him liquefied, Rin nods. Before Haru can speak, he catapults himself up the ladder of the diving board and races headlong with the speed of a reckless projectile into the pool, at once inviting and forbidding him entry.

 

* * *

 

 In the four years and six months they have been together, Rin has come close to talking about his volunteering in Tohoku one week after the tsunami. Anecdotes, told in rapt trances of thought, over tempura or steaming katsudon broth in the kitchen of their suite, suffices. Pressing him on the subject, something Nagisa has done on numerous occasions, strikes Haru as an inhuman act of cruelty. Showing a passion far beyond his usual deportment, he and Makoto had pulled their friend aside in the bathroom of their suite, assuring him of the stories Rin told himself over and over in backbreaking detail. Since then, Nagisa had relented, though not without reluctance.

" _You_ try helping him when he wakes up sobbing, then," Haru had snapped. 

One week, two in several hours, will have passed since he and Nagisa have spoken. Rei, in the form of a terse text message, informs him he's through with his role as mediator. Ignoring yet another imploring message from Makoto, beginning a short reply to Rei reminding him the play had no cast to begin with, Haru flips his phone shut when Rin speaks.

"Get ready for a long night. We're gonna need fuel."

Diving into the beverage refrigerator of the suite they share with Makoto and another good friend, a volleyball player and a prodigy who swears by the existence of yogurt drinks, Haru assembles the protein shakes in all of their decadent flavors. They settle onto their wooden stools under the crowded table, he with the banana flavor, Rin with the strawberry.

"First off, then," Rin says, slurping from a thick bubble tea straw, "a seismologist I met there said the tsunami rocked the earth ten inches off its axis. And not only that, but we're closer to America now, by four feet. I thought tsunamis were generated by water, too. That's not true by far. You have to take way more than water into account. I learned more about geology from other volunteers than I ever did from any class." He stares at his phone in front of him, glowing with an insistent message.

"Kageyama. I'll call him later. Back to the matter at hand. Kamaya, where I volunteered, had multiple schools: an elementary school and a middle school. I first found out about the former. By the time I got up there to help the parents of children search for the dead, the elementary school had vanished. Gone with the sea, and with it most of the children. Most of the villagers have lived their whole lives out there, so they've watched each other grow up and seen each other's children grow up and had no idea what to do with me. I forgot about myself. No one thought much about themselves. It was about helping everyone else remember their reasons for staying in Hell. People called it Hell when they talked to journalists. Remembering it numbs me. I get up at night thinking about a story a man told me, of seeing hands and feet reaching up and out of the mud, a boy crying tears of blood." He swallows, his throat clogged.

"They're still trying to rebuild their lives. It's far from over. We're in this horrible flux where we think once natural disasters stop receiving attention from every popular news source that suddenly shit's great, no more worries. Uh, no. You don't say goodbye to the worst nuclear disaster since fucking Chernobyl. Plan on the land around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant staying contaminated for decades. On top of that, whole villages were wiped out. I saw firsthand how some of them will never be rebuilt. Some parents, even now, are still searching for their children in what remains of the villages. I read an article in the _New_ _York_ _Times Magazine_ about a woman who sends text messages to her dead daughter. Not even swimming helps my memories leave me alone."

They walk to the recreation center, the birdsong replaced by the maddening chatter of cicadas, the confident surge of bikes rushing down quiet streets under the hazy glow of stoplights. Haru reaches for his hand, bracing for a swat, but Rin stores the both of them in the pocket of his slimming bodysuit, drawing him near.

"The man who told me that story, the one that wakes me up, he grew up in the village where I worked. He talked about the tofu shop, the saké shop, the fishermen, all within walking distance of each other. All the kids used to swim in the summer. Whole summers spent outside, everyone communing with nature: the mountainside, the ocean, the rice paddies buoyed by the water, the wind in the reeds. Playing ball, remembering the good fortune of their lives in a place so bountiful with the riches of the earth. He cried and I held him. I told him about you, about us. And do you know what, he supports us. That stereotype about Tohoku yokels, that's such bullcrap. The eeriness, though? Spooky stories? They're real. You need only ask."

Something akin to mischief flickers in his eyes. Shuddering, Haru remembers the night, oh so many moons ago now, when his friends told ghost stories on an island in the farthest reaches of the ocean.

"Do you remember the gentleman's name?" he says.

"He never told me." Rin laughs, deep in his throat. "I must have dreamt the whole conversation out of stress." Haru shakes his head.

"Impossible. Call Kageyama now before we both forget." Smoothing his fingers down the back of his neck, summoning goosebumps up and down Haru's arms, Rin digs his phone out of his pocket with his free hand and calls their roommate. It's a perfect night to meet up at the pool.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project (including the LLF Comment Builder), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates responses, including:
> 
> Short comments  
> Long comments  
> Questions  
> “<3” as extra kudos  
> Reader-reader interaction  
> This author replies to comments.


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